Does Alcohol Cause Weight Gain? Decoding the Facts
You could be doing everything right to lose weight but one tiny mistake could make it difficult for you to see the desired results. Alcohol consumption is one such factor. Even with perfect calorie control and exercise, alcoholic drinks can and do impact your weight.
How Does Alcohol Affect Your Weight?
Various factors, including what you drink, how often you drink, and how much alcohol you drink, can influence the effect of alcohol on your weight. However, other factors that affect your overall health and well-being, such as your diet, genetics, gender, physical activity, and age, also play a role.
A study has shown that alcohol may be a risk factor for obesity for some individuals, especially when consumed in large quantities. However, alcohol can cause many other issues than potential weight gain if consumed excessively.
For example, it can affect your circadian rhythm and cortisol levels. Disturbance n the circadian rhythm means a disordered sleep pattern that leads to hormonal imbalance which can cause excessive hunger, stress or slow metabolism all of which translate to weight gain.
High Calories
Alcoholic drinks are high in calories. For most forms of alcohol, two drinks are around 250 to 300 calories.
That’s approximately 12% of the daily recommended calorie intake for men or about 15% of the daily recommended calorie intake for women. Moreover, the additives and mixers added to many alcoholic beverages contain extra calories, carbs, and sugar.
The calories from alcohol are empty calories, meaning they have no nutritional value. Therefore, alcoholic drinks provide your body with many hidden calories, with close to no nutrients to back that up.
Affects Organs and Hormones
Your liver acts as a filter for any substances that enter your body and helps metabolise fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. However, drinking too much alcohol can lead to a fatty liver, which affects how your body metabolises fats and carbohydrates and makes it harder to lose weight.
Hormones are essential to the proper functioning of your body, and drinking alcohol can sometimes impair the functions associated with some hormones.
For example, cortisol is linked to เล่นบาคาร่า UFABET เว็บตรง ค่าคอมสูง weight gain because it stimulates hunger and affects metabolism. Alcohol can cause increased cortisol secretion in the body and imbalances in other reproductive hormones like oestrogen and testosterone, which also play a role in muscle building, fat storage, and metabolism. These hormonal imbalances can make it easier for an individual to gain weight through alcohol use.